Talk:World War II (The War That Came Early)
Just to be clear, I intentionally set this up as a separate article. A whole series dedicated to a different WW II will mean a long article, and a subsection in the main World War II article will probably make that article unwieldy. TR 03:22, 29 July 2009 (UTC) :If you say so. Good idea, actually. Turtle Fan 05:29, 29 July 2009 (UTC) ::Well it may change. TR 01:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC) :::I was thinking we might want to divide the WWII article into a main OTL version and several versions for several timelines. The problem there is that many ATLs don't give us enough information to make a properly long article; but then, we've got short baby articles on other wars. Turtle Fan 03:23, 31 July 2009 (UTC) I'm only about 100 pages into the book but I think that's a good start for now. Turtle Fan 15:32, 16 August 2009 (UTC) :I finished it earlier this week. I agree with many of the reviewers--it's not clear what HT is going for at this point, so it feels a bit of a retread. An entertaining retread, to be sure, but still a retread. The really interesting stuff is happening in the east, IMHO, but that isn't as developed as it could be. TR 15:37, 16 August 2009 (UTC) ::At this point I can see that the Asian scenes will be my favorites, but I didn't expect them to be developed when they're covered by 1) a neutral and 2) a non-com on a secondary front. It did however occur to me that since Japan is fighting the USSR, the USSR is fighting Germany, and HT never, never lets Hitler win, the USSR will almost certainly beat Japan in the end. And if we have people actually following the Asian theater, they may discuss the peace terms. This in turns means HT may finally give Korea a happy ending. ::Well, maybe not, if the USSR becomes its savior. That could just mean Kim Il-Sung uniting the peninsula. :( ::Anyway, I had expected to find the characters interesting but the story dull. I think I thought it would be boring because it was a bit far-fetched, requiring as it does two PoDs to stand on its own. The story's more intriguing than I'd expected, and the characters less so. Some of them are very interesting indeed, but there are so damned many redundant characters that they're getting lost in the crowd. When will HT ever learn that a war story is not supposed to be told by ten million soldiers all doing the same thing on the same narrow front? They're so repetitive they run together, and there are so many of them alternating scenes that by the time someone cycles back around I've forgotten all about him. It was okay, sort of, in the Settling Accounts books and the last volumes of the Darkness series, because by then I'd gotten to know the characters and could keep them straight. For an introduction to a timeline, this style--which by the way has little if anything positive to recommend it--simply won't do. Turtle Fan 20:29, 16 August 2009 (UTC) Two questions: :1. I read something about Hitler setting up a puppet government in Slovakia after Czechoslovakia fell. Should we change "Hlinka Guards" (which is of course a red link at the moment) to Slovakia? Turtle Fan 20:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC) ::No, we can keep them separate. The Hlinka Guards were just a Slovakian nationalist militia. Obviously, we can say in the Slovakia article how critical the Hlinka Guards were to Slovak separatism, which in turn allowed the Germans to overrun Czechoslovakia. TR 23:56, 19 August 2009 (UTC) :::So we should have both Hlinka Guards and Slovakia up there, is what you're saying? 15:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC) ::::Yes. TR 00:28, 21 August 2009 (UTC) :2. Just read a scene in which some Jap officer talked about the Korean Army seeing action against the Soviets. The Korean Army was loyal to the Republic of Korea's government-in-exile, the forerunner of the South Korean government, and had been at war with Japan since 1919. In fact, of all the wars between various Axis governments and various Allied ones that made up the systemic conflict of WWII, that one was the oldest. Naturally Japan didn't recognize the right of the RoK to exist and would not consider its forces as the "Korean Army." But I don't know of them having raised any forces of collaborators which operated seperately from the Kwantung Army. I know some early 20th century East Asian history, but not nearly as much as I'd like. Am I missing something? ::Since the characters next refer almost exclusively to the Kwantung Army in that same passage, I think the character was using Korean Army and Kwantung Army interchangeably. Not accurate, but that is the preogative of the imperial overlord, I suppose. TR 23:56, 19 August 2009 (UTC) :::Seemed to me more like they were talking about some sort of collaborationist militia that wanted to join, or at least be as good as, the Kwantung Army, but the Japs wouldn't let them. Oh well, I suppose it's not important. I was thinking perhaps Mr Nelg might know--He seems to be pretty good with that sort of thing. 15:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC) :Anyway, I ask because I was tossing around the idea of throwing Korea onto the Allied side, since we already have China there, and the RoK was a cobelligerent in the Second Sino-Japanese War. On the other hand, while the running conflict all along the North Asian frontier is absorbed into this version of WWII, the Sino-Japanese War has not yet been, so it might be more appropriate to remove China from the list. Turtle Fan 20:57, 19 August 2009 (UTC) ::I don't think adding Korea at this stage makes much sense, for the reasons you describe. Removing China makes some sense, although I can foresee it going right back on in the next volume, as China and the USSR will be co-belligerents. But let's just take her off for now. TR 23:56, 19 August 2009 (UTC) :::Agreed. 15:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC) One final note as I go off to read the last chapter, and it's that I'm surprised by how half-assed this war has been. The blitz of Czechoslovakia was thorough, the blitz of the Low Countries was thorough, and the fighting in France is thorough. But all the talk of how everyone is in a two-front war--hardly. The fighting in Poland is really nothing to write home about, not much of a distraction for Germany. Nor for Russia, really--I don't know why the Japs thought the Soviets wouldn't even notice their incursions. As the Japanese sergeant said at one point, "Shouldn't they be able to pat their head and rub their stomach at the same time?" Then again starting the war a year early means everyone's underarmed and underprepared. That's something that always surprises me about the world stage in the late 1930s--For a world on the brink of the largest war ever, the great powers really were amazingly demilitarized. The Brits and French had chucked their large military budgets in the Depression and were desperately trying to avoid the need to start spending on them again. The Germans were rearming rapidly but they had such a long way to go and, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they hadn't got there yet. The Red Army didn't know which way was up after having military experience essentially became a capital offense. The US Army was smaller than the Belgian or the Portugese, and when FDR did the peacetime draft it didn't have enough weapons or uniforms to train its new conscripts. Only Japan was on a war footing at the outset of hostilities, and they were hideously vulnerable to their supply bases drying up, a situation which could only be resolved by attacking four countries at once, some of them quite potent. Given those conditions I guess HW reads pretty true. I was disappointed in the progression of the changed history for the same reason I was with Atlantis's: It's different, but not that different. The two sides line up more or less the same, with the exception of Poland flipping. The USSR gets into it right away and doesn't fuck around with a non-aggression pact--a little exposition of why would have been nice, by the way--and France doesn't fold at the first sign of trouble, so the opening stages look more like 1914--as everyone and their brother is endlessly fond of reminding us. It's about as different from the real WWII as the Derlavaian War was. There I was disappointed that it wasn't closer to the original, here I'm disappointed that it wasn't farther off. In Derlavai all I was looking for was WWII with a lot of 1:1 correspondences except that it's magic instead of technology. I got the feeling HT wasn't content with that, that he wanted to play with some WWII AH-lets. I wish he'd saved them for a project like this. Still, the story was more interesting than I'd expected. :I was also a little dissappointed at the similarities to OTL in the West, although strategically, knocking out the Low Countries makes sense even in this context. Also glad to see the French not just caving, and Paris takes a beating, just for some variety. The real differences are in the East, and I hope HT expands on that more. TR 00:28, 21 August 2009 (UTC) ::Would be fun, especially since someone mentioned that the Russians are likely going to end up more heavily engaged there than in Poland. ::By the way, I wish they hadn't moved Fujita. I'd rather read about fighting in Mongolia than in Siberia. The Mongolian setting holds a certain exotic, almost mystical appeal to me, even though it is in fact quite bleak. The steppes that gave rise to Genghis--I'd sort of like to visit it some day, but not enough to go so far out of my way. I'd have to be living in NE Asia again, and if I were there I think I'd probably rather spend my bucks and burn my vacation time farther south. Turtle Fan 02:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC) The characters were less so. Above I bitch about how interchangeable they are. The most unique also proved to be the most disappointing. Peggy Druce, only female, only non-combatant, trapped behind the lines--And what does she do? Almost every scene, a different escape scheme that doesn't work. On the respective last pages of each of her scenes I could see a Saturday morning cartoon villain rubbing his hands in angst and declaring "Rats! Foiled again!" before lurking off to plan how to attempt a near-identical heist the next week. :Not the only female. Sara, the girl from Munster. Her brother will make an interesting POV. ::Oh yeah, forgot about her. That description of "a Jewish family that's proud of its history of German loyalty" was a bit overblown. They really weren't different from any other genocidaire-dodging family HT's written. ::You're assuming her brother takes over for Ludwig Rothe? He'd have a novel angle to play, but if he plays it too hard the jig is up and it's off to Dachau. Beyond that, he's just another front-line grunt, observing the same generic combat scenes and making the same hackneyed observations and complaints a dozen other characters are. Turtle Fan 02:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC) Her observations of how severe and brutal German society was were mildly interesting, but there was no great insight to them: Of course police who beat up a butcher for selling a chicken leg will make civilized people want to gag! If her anti-Nazi sentiments had led her to become a spy, as the Gestapo seemed to be convinced they had, she would have been an interesting character. Get close to officers like she did with that naval officer on New Year's Eve. Learn something from them, and give it to that gay consul to send out in the sealed diplomatic bag. But no, she was too busy trying to buy yet another train ticket to a central European port. At least she didn't end up sleeping with that sailor. But that's not really fair--Gratuitously promiscuous female characters are a blessed rarity in these later stages of HT's career. His backsliding with Diana McGraw seems to have been a one-time thing. :I suspect she is headed for the fun and exciting world of espionage. I just don't know why else she's there. A Jewish family can tell us how bad it is to be a Jew in Nazi Germany. TR 00:28, 21 August 2009 (UTC) ::I wish she'd have gotten there already. New Year's Eve would have been a wonderful time for her to start. ::Or if not, find her something to do, other than the same damned thing over and over. Turtle Fan 02:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC) ::As for the Jewish family telling us how bad it is to be a Jew in Nazi Germany . . . Good thing we get characters like that, they're real eye-openers. And here I always thought Jews had a gay old time. (Wait--I suppose both the gay and the elderly did end up with a few experiences in common with their Jewish compatriots, didn't they?) Turtle Fan 02:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC) Character I most hated was Chaim Weinberg. I think that has more to do with my antipathy for the Abe Lincoln Batallion in general. Weinberg seemed to encapsulate the combination of sneering arrogance toward a small country which required a large one's help and unquestioning hidebound communism. It's so damned tiresome. :He and the Spanish Nationalist feel like missed opportunities right now. Obviously, their the flipside of the same coin, a trick HT enjoys. They might become more relevant as the Spanish theater is more incorporated into the overall war. TR 00:28, 21 August 2009 (UTC) ::Delgadillo I sort of enjoyed. He wasn't insufferable like Weinberg (good thing Donut's not here, as we all know that only a fashist would say something like that) and, while he did the same "Let me tell you what it's like to be on the front lines of a mechanized war" shtick that everyone but Druce, Goldman, and McGill did, at least his war's got a different feel to it from everyone else's. ::Know what pissed me off more than anything in the book? We leave him off in the middle of a battle for Gibraltar. A battle for Gibraltar, you say? With a naval war in the Mediterranean that could have wide-ranging effects. What happened with it? Well we'll just have to wait till we cycle around to Delgadillo once again. . . . and wait . . . and wait . . . for two hundred pages! I'd expect that from John Birmingham, but not from HT. Turtle Fan 02:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC) I compared it to two other characters, the pilots: the Russian one, who's always lived with Stalinism and has the excuse of not knowing any other way, and yet is far more critical (privately, of course) of the regime than the worldly foreigner who should know better; and Hans-Ulrich Rudel, who is similarly doctrinaire. Despite this, the latter was a truly interesting character: I had been thinking how nice it was, finally, to have a military grunt POV who didn't indulge in every vice he could think of without ever stopping to wonder if there was more to life than reckless irresponsibility. (McSweeney was such a character too, but he was far too much of an intolerant blowhard for anyone to find him sympathetic.) I had a little trouble holding this minor virtuousness in tension in my head with the fact that he's a true blue Nazi; but that's an application of an anachronistic standard of morality. In his last scene, his very sheltered, unchallenging, Weinberg-esque noncritical acceptance of the state ideology is challenged and he has to ask some uncomfortable questions. I hope HT follows up on this theme: He does well with Nazis who become more and more unsure about what they've done, finally rejecting it altogether. He did it with Heinrich Jager, and I suppose AtD is about nothing but. He didn't do it with any Freedomites, except perhaps Hip, who suddenly decides genocide is wrong and, rather than attempt to rectify his past sins, immediately takes his own life, thus clearing the way for the latest in a long line of POVs who are front-line grunts, all doing the exact same thing. :Rudel died a true believer in OTL. Just saying. TR 00:28, 21 August 2009 (UTC) ::Yeah, I guess you're right. Still, one can hope. Turtle Fan 02:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC) Favorite character . . . I'd like to say Pete McGill but he was so useless. None of his scenes meant anything at all, he had no story to advance, and if you removed him you'd be left with the exact same books. He did provide a pleasant diversion, though. He was sort of like the half-time show at the Super Bowl, I guess. Hopefully when he gets to Shanghai he'll have something to do. :Aside from the obvious forshadowing that the US will get involved, McGill added nothing. At least Weinberg had a reason to be there. Aside from pointing out some of the absurdity of a neutral's military presence continuing within a foreign country occupied by another foreign country, McGill's role was incidental at best. TR 00:28, 21 August 2009 (UTC) ::I enjoyed him. His character has real texture and flavor. But if you're more interested in story than characters--and what's a character without a story, really? "Come read about somebody doing nothing but doing it in an interesting way!" If this were a movie instead of a book, his scenes would provide ideal opportunities for potty-breaks. Turtle Fan 02:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC) The Japanese sarge could have been a great character, if only, perhaps, Japan had launched its attack earlier. As it was, other than his first scene, exposition, and his last, where something finally happened, he just sat around waiting for the new war to start. He might as well have ended each of them with a kid coming onstage and saying "Godot will not be here today." One other thing: The SS purging the military didn't seem right to me. Hitler's totalitarianism wasn't so suffocating as Stalin's, unless you were an Untermensch or someone who could be RELIABLY connected to a plot against the Fuhrer. 15:45, 20 August 2009 (UTC) :True, but Hitler seemed more prone to paranoia once the fightin was on in OTL. TR 00:28, 21 August 2009 (UTC) ::I suppose. ::It reminded me a bit of one of the strong points of Birmo's middle AoT book: Himmler prepares a report on OTL for Hitler (omitting his own actions at the end, of course) and Hitler orders him to purge everyone who wound up plotting against him. He sends his goons to arrest Rommel, and when they get to the Fox's headquarters the entire Afrika Korps mutinies. It was nice. Turtle Fan 02:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC) The above was me. Seems I became logged out somewhere along the line. Turtle Fan 15:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC) :Okay, the last three scenes, where the Allies, who haven't been able to reverse the Germans' momentum all year long, are suddenly able to push them back with seconds to spare before Paris falls? And they do this not because they suddenly got reinforcements, new weapons, brilliant new commanders, more effective tactics, or even an upsurge in morale? Neither do they benefit from the deus ex machina suddenly giving the Germans the opposite of one or more of those boons? They just did it because we needed to have some tension in the cliff-hanger while we wait till next year? What the hell was that? Turtle Fan 20:59, 20 August 2009 (UTC) ::I assumed it was the German war machine shooting the last of its wad at that point. They'd knocked out the Czechs, the Low Countries, and charged into France, but Germany was only somewhat better prepared for the war in '38 than its enemies. It was probably bound to grind out sooner rather than later. Plus, it is a reasonably good cliffhanger. TR 00:28, 21 August 2009 (UTC) :::The grinding-to-a-halt bit was much too sudden. It doesn't happen just like that, there should have been a gradual slowing of German momentum for the last few chapters. It wouldn't take much, just fifty pages or so. Instead we get "The Germans always win when they're serious about it--except suddenly, they don't." And it was contrived: The moment when the Aryans suddenly fall back to Earth just happens to be the moment right before they clinch the pennant? Characters kept talking about the Miracle on the Marne and how they needed another one. They got one--It wasn't on the Marne, but it was a miracle, delivered by deus ex machina. A deus whose best known quote, by the way, is "Fiction needs to be plausible. History needs only to happen." :::Having Paris saved does create tension going into the cliffhanger, but having it fall would have done the same thing: Will the French be able to stay in the fight? The best ending of all, in terms of suspense, might have been to zoom out while the battle was still ongoing and had yet to be decided (works well when you're doing it deliberately to create suspense, less so when you're doing it because you forgot you'd left a loose end dangling or just because you don't care, as with Gibraltar.) But he can't do properly suspenseful cliffhangers. Hasn't even tried one since American Front. :::(sigh) I'm just thinking how cool it would have been to have TG end with a bomb going off in Featherston's office, and no report of who if anyone was killed until IatD came out a whole year later. It would have been a long year, to be sure, but isn't that the point of the cliffhanger, anyway? Turtle Fan 02:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC) Catholic Dictators Now that I've put the commanders up I'm a tad chagrined to realize that just about every one of Hitler's European stooges professes my faith. Oh well, what can you do. Turtle Fan 15:25, 23 August 2009 (UTC) Tojo Just FYI, I deleted Tojo initially because I was thinking purely in terms of politics, and Tojo wasn't elected PM until 1941. I forgot he actually did lead militarily. TR 19:00, 23 August 2009 (UTC) :Yeah, I almost didn't add him for the same reason. But he was a general, and a Cabinet minister too. Granted, it might have been better to look up the PM in '38 and put him in. Turtle Fan 20:12, 23 August 2009 (UTC) Name Before TBS comes out we'll be wanting to come up with a name for this war, one consistent something to put after the | thingy when we write an article. Based on HT's history I see every reason to assume that, if we don't name it, it won't get named: Second Great War, Race-German War of 1965, French and Spanish War, arguably Atlantean War of Independence, and we still don't have a name for the war between the Big Five and the Race, at least not a name we use regularly. We do have an article on the conflict somewhere around here, and it's got a title, but we don't refer to it by name in the text of articles that link to it. I'm trying to brainstorm up some titles but it's not easy. Unfortunately, the best I've got so far is the War of 1938. Other options I've rejected (if you're wondering what's less inspiring than naming a war after its starting date) include the Munich Conference War, the Czechoslovakia War, and the War to Avenge Konrad Henlein. (Also Hitler's War, if we want to get twee.) I take solace in knowing that, if HT does get around to naming the war, he'll call it something even lamer still, like the Second Mexican War or the Servile Insurrection. Turtle Fan 23:43, April 27, 2011 (UTC) :You could take the Derlavai route and call it the "European War," though that really doesn't describe anything that makes this European war different from all the other ones prior to it. ::When I wrote HW articles I typically called it the European War. I would modify it outside the brackets: "the European war that began when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938," or some variant thereof. Then the war spread to North Asia and that was out. Though the Asian part of the war was frankly fairly half-assed and, according to the latest spoiler info we have, is on the verge of being dropped from the narrative altogether. ::Which is going to make it that much harder to call it a world war. If Japan stops fighting the USSR, and if the US continues to take a nap, the only involvement of the 98% of the world's surface area that is not in Europe will be the Canadian expeditionary force that got one offhanded mention and however many men and/or materiel Stalin has left in Siberia, Kazakhstan, and smaller Asian SSRs that a) the Japanese don't take as the price of their separate peace and b) he doesn't leave in place in case the Japanese get cute again. And the Abe Lincolns, I guess. (And thinking back on it, didn't the Mexican government provide the Republicans with significant assistance?) Though that only counts if they come into direct conflict with the Germans or Italians. Turtle Fan 04:49, May 2, 2011 (UTC) :Or the Great German War, like how the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were called the Great French War before historians realized they were two distinct periods. Jelay14 19:33, May 1, 2011 (UTC) ::Turtledove seems to be prepared to call it the Second World War at the moment. Several characters refer back to "the World War", and then correct themselves with "the First World War". TR 00:27, May 2, 2011 (UTC) :::Perhaps. See above for why that's bullshit. Still, if HT says it we're kind of stuck with it. Turtle Fan 04:49, May 2, 2011 (UTC) Denmark, Axis member? OK, I'm now at the start of the Norwegian campaign. Sure, Denmark offered as much resistance to Germany as Luxembourg but that doesn't make it a German ally. Is Denmark attacked by the Entente later or something? And when is Bulgaria mentioned, by the way?WastedTime 12:15, June 3, 2011 (UTC) :Fixed. TR 14:44, June 3, 2011 (UTC) Slight reorganization of the article Hopefully this reshuffling of sections and new subsection titles will make the article easier to read/write. I adopted some of the suggestions made by TF at some other point. I think he suggested seperate articles as well. That might be worth doing later, but I think we need to build this article up more fully before we consider new articles. If there's anything else that we should need, or if you disagree with the format, give a yell. TR 16:01, June 3, 2012 (UTC) :It all looks good to me, though I'm wondering if the section on the Big Switch might be better as the first subsection of the Phase II section. A template with each Phase might also be good; the one template we have is rather outdated at the moment. Turtle Fan 03:45, June 4, 2012 (UTC) ::Actually, with the new color coding and stackable template options, it's probably time to just create some new templates for the wars. TR 17:51, June 4, 2012 (UTC) Templates Since TBS came out, this war has been far too complex for one template to handle. The spoilers TR's found show Britain fighting against Germany by the end of CdE, so we're on the verge of a Phase 3. Given both these facts, I've gone ahead and given us two different templates for Phases 1 and 2 (and of course we'll add one for Phase 3 as information becomes available). I'm open to suggestions for ways to improve this setup, of course. I made a few formatting decisions on the spot: I separated the Pacific War from the Phase 2 template because there was just no way to fit it into a two-column list of combatants alongside the European war. It would have implied obvious falsehoods like an alliance between the Soviets and Japan. So I gave it a separate template and am wondering if it should have a separate article as well. :I'm in "wait and see" mode on the Pacific War as a separate article. Right now, it's about as tangential to the European conflict as the Spanish Civil War is, really, but given HT's tropes, American participation in the European conflict in the wake of the British coup is likely. TR (talk) 20:56, July 26, 2012 (UTC) ::If that happens we can list Japan as a ThirCo member, especially if the Soviets decide that, with things looking up for them in Europe, they don't have to accept their uneven peace anymore. But it's probably still goingto be of very limited relevance to Phase 2. But time will tell. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:13, July 27, 2012 (UTC) I've also removed the Spanish Civil War combatants from the templates, given how loose and casual the two sides' affiliations are with the combatants of the wider war. Despite Nationalist participation in the Italian attack on Gibraltar, they're not at war with anyone but each other. Better I think to have templates in the SCW article and leave the main article alone. :Yeah, that's probably for the best. While there are still avenues for the SCW to become more tightly pulled into the overall war, it's still very self-contained, especially compared with the Pacific situation. TR (talk) 20:56, July 26, 2012 (UTC) I've winnowed the lists of commanders down to political leaders, to keep things from getting out of hand. If a military leader (who is not also a political leader) makes a really big splash, we can change that. :Yeah, probably a good idea. TR (talk) 20:56, July 26, 2012 (UTC) I took the liberty of listing Egypt in the Phase 2 template, though I'm regretting that already and think I'll remove it as soon as I'm done here, pending our learning what actually happens in Egypt. It's just that the Soviet flag looked so lonely, having only the flag of a fallen government for company, and with SecCo having so many flags to wave in its face. Turtle Fan (talk) 20:33, July 26, 2012 (UTC) :From what I can tell, Egypt becomes an issue very close to the end of the book, almost certainly after the coup. So it has no clear involvement in Phase 2, but is most probably a Phase 3 belligerent. TR (talk) 20:56, July 26, 2012 (UTC) ::So they'll be a straight up ThirCo member and German ally. Maybe Germany stirs the Arabs up as punishment for switching back. Not quite so exciting as some of the guesses we came up with when ee first saw that preview. Turtle Fan (talk) 02:13, July 27, 2012 (UTC) :::I'm going to caution against presuming sides: this could be Italy making a bid for Egypt, in which case the government of Egypt (if not the Egyptian people) would be part of the "Allies". TR (talk) 14:54, July 27, 2012 (UTC) ::::Somehow that never occurred to me, though of course you're right. Alas, since we've learned that Japan switches back, it seems our predictions are shifting to "HT does write a rough parallel of OTL after all." Turtle Fan (talk) 16:47, July 27, 2012 (UTC) Name Redux I guess Walsh's reference to the "Second World War Traitors" means that HT is sticking with some variant of WW II for his war. I guess it could change in two volumes, but we don't have to move it anytime soon. TR (talk) 14:43, August 10, 2012 (UTC)